Back to Back's back to challenge audience preconceptions

By Robin Usher

July 16, 2008 — 10.00am

IF THE Back to Back Theatre Company did not exist, it's doubtful anyone would have the imagination to invent its unrivalled success — as a small company made up of people with intellectual disabilities, it toured internationally for nearly six months last year.

There is more travel to come. The company's director, Bruce Gladwin, says its big hit from the 2005 Melbourne International Arts Festival, Small Metal Objects, will take to the road again next year and already has invitations for 2010.

Since its premiere at the Flinders Street Station concourse, it has been to 21 cities in North America and Europe, including Zurich, where it won an award for "extraordinary artistic achievement".

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The acclaim for a show performed in public spaces to an audience wearing headphones to hear the actors' dialogue about two small-time drug dealers and their clients has almost become a distraction.

"It's a privilege to collaborate with the performers on shows like that," Gladwin says. "I couldn't have created it on my own, and the return for working this way has been fantastic."

The collaboration is now focused on two new shows. One, commissioned by the Austrian city of Linz as part of its European Capital of Culture Festival next year, continues the company's tradition of performing in public spaces, while the other new show, Food Court, will premiere at the Malthouse on October 9, the opening night of this year's Melbourne Festival.

"Going back inside a theatre feels the riskiest and most experimental thing to do at this stage," Gladwin says. "We have been defining our own rules by experimenting away from the conventions of a classical theatre structure."

Food Court sounds far from conventional. Two women harass a third about her intelligence and appearance in a food hall, while two men with a boom mike record the conversation.

Live music will be performed by Sydney's improvisational jazz trio the Necks. Gladwin says this will provide a random element to each performance, because the playing will change every night, and dialogue will only be spoken when the music stops.

"Theatre is about the balance between control and chaos — if you want total control, you would make films," he says.

The company learned to cope with chaotic moments during performances of Small Metal Objects. In its first season at Flinders Street, race-goers coming back from Caulfield racetrack became involved in the show.

"A few had obviously had a bit to drink and some lay across the laps of people in the front row of the audience and others did moonies," he says.

When the company performed at the Manhattan ferry terminal in New York last year, the actors were asked if they could deal with the hordes of travellers. "We were confident that after handling the spring racing crowds we could deal with anything New York could throw up."

One of the actors, Sonia Teuben, enjoys the touring aspect. "I don't want to come home," she says. "Others get homesick, but I think they are wimps."

A company member for 15 years, she says a Back to Back show has to be "confronting, uplifting and in-your-face".

"The two women (in Food Court) pick on the other one to make themselves feel tougher," she says. "The play confronts the audience by reminding them that we are no different from them — we are still human."

Another actor, Scott Price, says the new play is about everything you should not do to people. "In the arts, we can get away with stuff that isn't politically correct."

He has unhappy memories of high school, where, he says, he was often bullied. "We play with ideas and draw on our own experience. We know what we do will shock some people, but it's one way of getting our own back."

Gladwin says the company's members are barely part of cultural institutions such as education and politics that everyone usually takes for granted. "But they are great commentators on those institutions."

2008 festival highlights

Patti Smith Residency: in concert with band at Hamer Hall, October 11-12; in concert with Phillip Glass in Dedication to Allen Ginsberg, Arts Centre Playhouse, October 13; Photography & Installation at Anna Schwartz Gallery, October 7-25; Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a film by Steven Sebring at ACMI, October 9-12; Objects of Life, a multimedia installation by Smith and Sebring at CCP, Fitzroy.

The Navigator: opera by Liza Lim, directed by Barrie Kosky, the Arts Centre Playhouse, October 9-12.

The Schonberg Ensemble: Hamer Hall, October 9-10.

Phillip Glass and Leonard Cohen: Book of Longing, Arts Centre State Theatre, October 15-17.